Saturday, 12 October 2013

News Report: “African Heads Of State Should Not Be Tried”—AU Ministers

Credit: Reuters

Africa has agreed that sitting heads of
state should not be put on trial by the International Criminal Court where
Kenya's leaders are in the dock, Ethiopian Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom said
before African leaders met on Saturday.

The ministers of the 54-member African Union also called for
deferring the cases of Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy, William
Ruto, the minister said after a meeting to discuss Africa's relations with the
court based in The Hague.

"We have rejected the double standard that the ICC is
applying in dispensing international justice," Tedros told the delegates
after a ministerial meeting on Friday that ran beyond midnight. The summit is
expected to endorse the recommendations.

He said trying Kenya's president and his deputy infringed on
that nation's sovereignty. The two men deny charges that they orchestrated a
killing spree after a disputed 2007 election.

Frustration with the ICC has been growing in Africa because the
court has convicted only one man, an African warlord, and all others it has
charged are also Africans.

The ministers did not call for a mass walk-out from the court's
jurisdiction, however. Officials had previously said that idea would be on the
agenda but it had not drawn broad support among the continent's 34 signatories
to the court's Rome Statute.

Rights groups had urged African nations not to turn their backs
on the court, which they say is vital to ending what they see as a culture of
impunity in African politics.

"We underscored that sitting heads of state and governments
should not be prosecuted while in office," Tedros said, speaking at the
African Union's headquarters in Addis Ababa.

The minister said a group led by the AU chair, now Ethiopia,
with representatives from Africa's five regions would press the U.N. Security
Council to defer the court proceedings against the Kenyan leadership and
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

While the Kenyan politicians have cooperated with the court,
Bashir has rejected the ICC's charges of war crimes and genocide, and is now
subject to an arrest warrant.

"Demanding Respect":

Tedros told Reuters a one-year delay was being requested under
article 16 of the Rome Statute.

Ministers called for using video links in the Kenyan trials to
ensure leaders could carry on their official duties.

The court has yet to rule on whether Kenyatta and Ruto can be
excused from large parts of their trials or whether they can participate by a
video link. Proceedings, though not trials, against the two were underway
before their March vote win.

"Demanding respect is the least Africa can do, but I also
don't like to see this mistaken for - as we have seen with some of the
detractors of this exercise - that Africans are supporting impunity. We
don't," Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo told Reuters.

After wrangling over wording at Friday's meeting that ran long
past the scheduled close, one senior delegate described the outcome as a
"good compromise". Kenya said it had not pushed for a walk-out but
said others had supported the idea.

Some Africans, including officials from heavyweights South
African and Nigeria, had indicated there was not broad support for a walk-out
from a court that received the backing of many Africans when it was set up.

Before the meeting, the London-based rights group Amnesty
International urged African nations not to end cooperation with the court,
saying victims of crimes deserved justice.

"The ICC should expand its work outside Africa, but it does
not mean that its eight current investigations in African countries are without
basis," Amnesty's deputy director of law and policy, Tawanda Hondora, said
in a statement.

Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed said she was satisfied
with the outcome of the meeting, adding that immunity for a sitting president
was "a principle that has existed for a long time" in international
law.

Lawyers for Kenyatta asked on Thursday that his trial on charges
of crimes against humanity be abandoned, saying defence witnesses had been
intimidated.

Ruto went on trial in The Hague last month and Kenyatta's trial
is due to start on Nov. 12.